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COMFORT IN TRIBULATION 



AN ADDRESS 



DELIVERED IN THE 






REFORMED DUTCH CHURCH, STAPLETON, S. I., 



SEPTEMBER 26th, 1861, 



A DAY KEPT AS A NATIONAL FAST, 



BY APPOINTMENT OF THE PEESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES. 






BY THOMAS H/ SKINNER, Jr. 



ANSON D. F. RANDOLPH, 683 BR0AD\7AY. 

1861. 



^^1 



- 458 



r 



Stapleton, Sept. 80th, 1861. 

Rev. Thomas H. Skinner, Jr. : 

Dear Sir : The undersigned, who listened with great satisfaction 
to your admirable and timely Address delivered on the recent Fast-Day, 
September 26th, deeming a wider circulation of so thorough and able a 
resume of questions now agitating the country, most desirable, respectfully 
and earnestly solicit a copy of the same for publication. Encouraged by 
your well-known and intelligent patriotism, we sincerely hope that you will 
accede to our request, and oblige many friends, who, in common with your- 
self, love, labor, and pray for our beloved country's triumph over the most 
wicked and causeless of rebellions, and for her peace and prosperity. 
Yours very respectfully, 

J. H. SINCLAIR, E. A. LUDLOW, 

DAVID THOMPSON, A. N. GUNN, M.D., 

WILLIAM SHAW, JOHN R. SMITH, 

SAMUEL WANN, WM. HOWELL TAYLOR, 

ELWOOD TAYLOR, JOHN D. DIX, 

J. T. VAN VLECK, E. S. SAXTON, 

R. L. ALLEN, T. C. MOFFAT, M.D. 



Stapleton, Oct. 1st, 1861. 

Messrs. J. H. Sinclair, David Thompson, and others : 

Gentlemen : The Address which you ask for was designed only for 
the Pulpit ; yet I reluctantly yield it to your disposal, hoping that its pub- 
lication may, to some extent, further the object for which it was prepared. 

Respectfully yours, 

THOS. H. SKINNER, Jr. 



COMFOKT IN TRIBULATION. 



The Chief Magistrate of the nation has summoned it to 
tlie public observance of a day of humiliation, prayer, and 
fasting. He has done this not merely at the bidding of his 
own heart and conscience, but at the request of both houses of 
our national Legislature, made to hun in a very unusual form, 
through a joint committee. Never were the people more 
solemnly called upon to acknowledge their dependence upon 
the Supreme Euler by the confession of their sins, and the sup- 
plication of his favorable interposition. With all our hearts 
and minds we should respond to the summons, and iu the sanc- 
tuaries of Divine worship confess and deplore our sins, and 
accept the humiliation of our pride and self-confidence, adoring 
the justice and imploring the mercy of the Most High. 

Called, in the providence of God, to address you to-day, I am 
not unconscious of the responsibility thus imposed upon me ; 
and with deference, though with no distrust of their truthful- 
ness and importance, submit to your candor the statements and 
considerations which I have prepared. 

Should the line of thought be somewhat different from your 
anticipation, and present more cheerful hopes and prospects 
than you have been inclined to indulge, it will, I trust, embrace 
reasons why you should not hastily set them aside as unworthy 
of your acceptance. Ordinary civilians are confessedly incom- 



6 COMFORT IN TRIBULATION. 

petent to form just judgments of military and naval plans and 
projects previous to their development and execution, but tlie}^ 
ougbt not to be incapable of appreciating tlie moral and spirit- 
ual principles wbicli justify on our part tbe colossal struggle 
that is now shaking tbe nation to its center,. It is by these, 
and by these alone, that the national heart can sustain itself 
amid the clouds and darkness that overhang the country. If 
the ground on Avhich this Union rests is composed of merely 
material elements ; if its territory and rivers and oceans and 
lakes, its iron and gold and lead and copper, its trade and com- 
merce and wealth and population, its laws and treaties and 
armies and navies — if these constitute the basis of our hope, 
our bulwark and defense, we do well to be alarmed and 
despondent. But if all these rest upon a deeper foundation ; if 
the inner life of our Union and liberties is spiritual and divine ; 
if the historic strength of the nation is religious and Christian — 
then we may be assured that our present tribulation will not 
only be temporary, but that it will purify and adorn the sacred 
temple of human liberty which God has erected upon this con- 
tinent. Thus may the waters of strong consolation be struck 
.from the spiritual Eockon which our Constitution and Union and 
all our ]naterial power are founded. God's hand in this vast and 
terrible insurrection is lifted up on high, and that with a design, 
which, unlike the writing on the "wall of Balshazzar's palace, 
needs no inspired prophet to interpret. The monster, conceived 
in sin and shapen in iniquity, which has essayed to undermine 
and demolish the stately fabric of our freedom, confined and 
surrounded as by a wall of fire, we may be confident, will sting 
and consume itself; and the power be taken from all who wor- 
ship the beast, to destroy or ultimately to hurt in all this holy 
heritage of God. 

We have been so long accustomed to almost every form of 
national advancement, that the precious lessons of adversity 
taught by our early history are forgotten. We have lost sight 



COMFOKT m TRIBULATIOX. l 

of the great truth, that there are often richer blessings in 
calamity and change than in constant success : so that when the 
clouds of adversity lower over us, and the floods come, and the 
winds blow and beat upon our political structure, we tremble 
for its safety, and with it that of all our interests and hopes, as 
though its foundations were as the sand. When our pride is 
brought low by maligTiant and wide-spread rebellion, when our 
assured confidence of perpetual peace under our Constitution is 
dashed by fratricidal war, and we are bitterly humbled in dis- 
graceful defeats, not only before our guilty foes, but before the 
civilized world ; when the tide of wealth and grandeur ebbs, 
and disaster waits upon our commerce, trade, business, and 
enterprise, then we are cast down and overwhelmed, as though 
God had forsaken us, and we were brought to the verge of 
inevitable destruction. A temporary defeat depresses us ; a 
slight success elates us ; we are tossed up and down on the 
bloody sea through which we are sailing, and are deaf to the 
voice of our covenant Guardian walking upon the waters and 
saying : "It is I, be not afraid." We fail to perceive that in 
the providence of God, substantially the same principles and 
precisely the same elements of character which gave courage, 
endurance, and self-sacrifice to England in her wars with Napo- 
leon, to this country in her conflict with England, to Holland 
in her struggles with Spain, abound in our nation to-day, and 
are as mighty to sustain and encourage us as ever flhey have 
been to animate others in the past. We need to be taught over 
again the lessons which our fathers learnt. We need to go 
through the furnace of affliction, and receive the rebukes of our 
Sovereign Ruler. The nation, as well as the man, whom the 
Lord loveth, he chasteneth. As we bow beneath his rod, let 
us kiss the hand that smites us, and with childlike and trusting- 
hearts, let us bless him for his correcting love, and rejoice that 
he counts us worthy of the sufferings to which he calls us, 



8 COMFORT IN TRIBULATION. 

and of the glory wliich, tlirougli tlaese sufferings, he is yet to 
reveal in us as a great and powerful people. 

The war in which we are now involved is sometimes viewed 
as the stern judgment of God for our national sins. It is said 
that the Divine forbearance is exhausted ; that the cup of our 
iniquity is full ; that the day of recompense has come, and the 
iron scepter of Justice is raised against us ; already are we being 
broken in pieces as a potter's vessel ; our glory is departed ; our 
virtue has faded ; and this people once so proud and arrogant and 
defiant, must yield before the imperious dictation of rebellion, 
and the broken, distracted, crushed North must be divided and 
distracted still more to give way to the power whose chief 
strength is the enslavement of a race for whom Christ died. 
For one, I can not kneel before God to-day under such impres- 
sions. I do not doubt that our country deserves destruction 
from . the hand of God. If he should deal with us according 
to our sins, our fate would not be unjust, though the land 
should be rocked with an earthquake, and the ground open and 
swallow up every inhabitant of it. Our sins, as a |)eople and as 
a nation, are very great and numerous — enhanced by our supe- 
rior light and blessings. We have no desire to cloak or to 
extenuate them. Intemperance, profanity, Sabbath-breaking, 
opposition to parental restraint, covetousness, ambition, pride, 
arrogance, self-confidence, neglect of the Bible, free-thinking, 
sectional •bitterness and partisan strife, corruption at the very 
fountain-head of State and National administration, accompa- 
nied, in instances not a few, with perjury, falsehood, treachery ; 
and slavery — not as a relation between master and servant, 
regulated by the Bible, but as a system of human bondage, 
perverted to individual, sectional, and national aggrandisement. 
I need not enlarge the catalogue. Our sins, both in their nature 
and in their number, are great beyond our thought, and merit 
the severest judgments of Heaven. There is no doubt on this 
point, and we can not confess and bewail them too heartily. 



COMFORT IN TRIBULATIOlSr. 9 

But our sins, however great, do not surpass the power and 
riches of God's grace. "We need not, we ought not to despair. 
The confession of sin is one of the declared conditions and war- 
rants of the Divine mercy. When every loyal Christian, every 
thoughtful citizen thus feels and speaks, and when the senti- 
ment finds unfeigned utterance in both Houses of Congress, and 
universal expression through the solemn proclamation of the 
President, and the doors of tens of thousands* of churches are 
opened, in humble acknowledgment of our sins and of our 
dependence, surely we may and ought to believe that God has 
neither forsaken nor forgotten us. If there is joy in heaven 
over one sinner that repenteth, what joy must there be at the 
humiliation and sorrow, the penitence and prayers of this young 
Christian nation, when God raises his hand to chastise them j 
Without a murmur at the terrible Divine judgment, the people 
accept it, and think only of their sins as the cause of our deep 
national shame and grief, and bow before their offended Euler 
and Benefactor, craving his forgiveness and protection. And 
while they prosecute the tremendous conflict with energy and 
unanimity, they do it with no malignant or vindictive spirit, 
but in the spirit of lofty patriotism and religious duty, seeking 
neither the humiliation of the South, but simply the preserva- 
tion of the Constitution and the Union, and the restoration of 
their fellow-citizens in that revolted region to the protection 
and blessings of the Eepublic. 

But there are other aspects in which the present state of our 
country may be viewed. The strife is mainly between two 
geographical sections, the South and the North. Doubtless 
there have been sins peculiar to each division, for which God 
may have a controversy with us. Easy wei'e it certainly to 
draw out a long catalogue of the wrongs of the South, both 
against the North and against her own slave population. But 
I refrain myself, and speak only of their latest and greatest 
wrong, their rebellion against the Government and the Union 



10 COMFORT IX TRIBULATION. 

of tlie country ■ — a wrong and a crime whose Divine judicial 
treatment carries with it the punishment of all their other sins, 
and whatever may be the troubles of the North, there remains 
no jDlace for doubt that the direst consequences, the jDcrraanent 
resulting evils of this war will be chiefly uj^on the infatuated 
insurgents themselves. The leaders who prepared the South 
for rebellion, or rather prepared rebellion for the South, and 
precipitated her •into it, did not dream of the colossal, deter 
mined, and deadly struggle in which they now are inextricably 
involved. In their blindness they counted upon a short con- 
flict and an easy victory. They counted upon a weak adminis- 
tration, a divided North, and foreign recognition and interven- 
tion. But God would not have it so ; the enormity of their 
crime forbade it. Their long preparations, their willing or 
forced union, their vast armies, their unexpected victories, have 
not helped them. Their task increases in magnitude every 
day. As their sufferings and deprivations accumulate, the de- 
mand for greater sacrifices and supplies increases. As their 
wants multiply, their means diminish. Shut out from all the 
world, and shut into themselves ; without manufactures and the 
arts, without mechanics and artisans, without money and credit; 
with three million six hundred thousand bond slaves depend- 
ent on them, and thirsting for freedom ; with a sparsely settled 
population, and relatively difficult intercommunication — hav- 
ing, with an area of nearly 800,000 square miles, less than 8000 
miles of railroad — without a navy, and every port blockaded, 
and every comfort and necessary of life from the North and 
from Europe interdicted — in these circumstances they are com- 
pelled to wage this war against the government of the country 
supported by the people with an unanimity and zeal unexam- 
pled in the history of mankind, six millions against twenty- 
three. That government was indeed disabled and prostrate ; its 
army was scattered upon our most distant borders ; its navy 
dispersed over remote seas ; its munitions of war were trans- 



COMFORT IX TRIBULATION", 11 

ferred to the South ; its subordinate offices were filled witli 
traitors and spies, and the people were divided by the bitterest 
partisan strife known in our history, so that there seemed for 
a few months, a possibility of success on the part of the South. 
But all this is now changed ; and what the rebellion could not 
do when we were weakest and it was strongest, it must now 
attempt when parties have disappeared from among us, and 
the people are fused into one glowing mass of patriotic fervor 
and devotion ; when the treasure of the country, never so 
abundant, is laid at the feet of the Government ; when the 
navy has returned and is greatly augmented, and the army is 
strengthened by hundreds of thousands, purged of its traitor- 
ous officers, nerved by defeat, and made courageous by disci- 
pline, and supplied and able to keep itself supplied with all the 
munitions of war ; when our communications with the world 
are free, and among ourselves, with an area about the same as 
that of the South, facilitated by more than 23,500 miles of rail- 
road ; when the spirits of the people, saddened and depressed 
for a time by the almost universal repudiation of Southern 
debts, are quickened by the return of confidence, by the gene- 
ral revival of business, by the ready employment of capital 
augmented by the immense outlays of the Government, by the 
sympathies of foreign powers, and by the safety from hostile 
invasion of every port and every foot of territory in the fi'ee 
States. Surely the prospect for the South is sufficiently ap- 
palling. The heart sickens at the contemplation of the things 
that must be coming upon them. The cloud that overhangs 
them skirts their whole horizon, and we can see no silver 
lining to it. Their trade and commerce and credit are de- 
stroyed ; the productions of their soil are rendered valueless ; 
their people are impoverished; their choicest population are 
sacrificed on the battle-field and in the hospital; their territory 
is being overrun with hostile armies, before whose tramp, farms, 
houses, villages, whole counties are wasted and destroyed ; the 



12 COMFOET IN TRIBULATION. 

foundations of their social fabric are upheaving, a reign of ter- 
ror impends over them — and this is only the beginning of their 
sorrows. Are we mistaken when we regard this war as the 
natural result, the judicial penal consequence of the deep con- 
spiracy, of the systematic fraud, perfidy, perjury, treachery, 
plunder, and falsehood, in which this rebellion was conceived 
and born, by which it has been cherished, strengthened, and 
fashioned into a hideous monster, from which the civilized 
world draws back with horror ? "Why should any one look 
upon the war as the death-knell of the nation? It must 
needs be that offenses come, but woe unto them by whom they 
come. 

It is not to be doubted that God has matter of controversy 
with the North for sins against the South. I need not speak 
of the course of Northern presses and pulpits and orators in 
their self-righteous attacks upon Christian and other slavehold- 
ers in the South, or criticise the course of some Northern States 
in their legislation against the return of fugitive slaves, or con- 
demn the reluctance and refusal of individual citizens to exe- 
cute the law of the land for such return, or remark upon the 
seeming or real injustice of our tariffs, of our fishing-bounties, 
or of our navigation laws. God may be visiting us for these 
thino-s, and doubtless we deserve much on these accounts. 
But there is one aspect, especially, in which wer have sinned 
against the South, to which we should give our earnest 
thought. AYe have blamed the South for their spirit of ag- 
gression upon the soil and principles of freedom. I think they 
have sinned greatly, but they have sinned under strong tempt- 
ations and through the connivance and the aid of the North. 
We led the South to the brink of the precipice over which they 
have plunged. The North has lacked moral courage to do her 
duty. She has sought peace before principle. She has pre- 
ferred material interest and prosperity to determined vindica- 
tion of the vital principles of our Constitution and Union. 



COMFORT IN TRIBULATION. 13 

Slie has been timid and fearful, and even cowardly in matters 
of highest, sternest duty. In almost every sectional controver- 
sy she has yielded to slavery. Nay, sometimes she has led 
forward that too willing power in new demands, and sacrificed 
Freedom on her strange altars. The North has acquiesced, 
with no indignant protests, no settled opposition against them, 
in Ostend Manifestos, Cuban and Central American expeditions 
of territorial conquest, and the steady increase of the slave- 
trade in her own ports. Eather than have trouble, we yielded, 
till our forbearance not only ceased to be a virtue, but became 
a flagrant crime. 

Look at a brief historical sketch made vivid in the lurid 
light of this war. The freedom and personal independence of 
every man, the right of all to life, liberty, and the pursuit of 
happiness, were the spirit and the glory of our national charter ; 
and the fathers were of one mind and heart concerning slavery. 
It was doomed in their purpose and plan. In the year 1787, a 
vast territory, embracing 239,849 square miles, was ceded to 
the United States by Yirginia. By the unanimous vote of 
Congress, the whole of it was forever consecrated to freedom. 
In 1798, the cotton-gin was invented, and an impulse was given 
to the culture of the staple by slave-labor, such that slavery 
gradually became a great financial, political, and social power, 
and was regarded by many no longer a curse and a blot, but a 
source of strength and growth. At once a change in the policy 
of the South was inaugurated, and the struggle for dominion 
between Freedom and Slavery began. The two powers almost 
immediately came into conflict. Such enactments as that of 
1787 were impossible. In 1800 Georgia ceded to the United 
States nearly 98,000 square miles of territory lying between 
her western boundary and the Mississippi. The entire cession 
was yielded to slavery. In 1803, the nation purchased of 
Napoleon the boundless territories Ijang between the Mississippi 
and the Eocky Mountains. Freedom did not dare to spread 



14 COMFORT IN" TRIBULATION". 

her banner over this immense region. She compromised with 
her foe, and by running a hne along the parallel of 36° 30', 
because they threatened secession and dissolution, consigned 
Louisiana, Arkansas, and Missouri forever to the labor of 
enslaved Africans. Just before, we purchased Florida from 
Spain, and allowed slavery to preside over and control her 
destinies. Next came the war with Mexico and the struggle 
over free Texas. Slavery demanded this immense area, 
225,000 square miles of fertile lands, and to this demand 
added that of the right to create five slave States out of that 
virgin territory. After a show of resistance, the North again 
yielded, and slavery triumphed. Emboldened by success, and 
confident of her power, the South then required a more strin- 
gent fugitive-slave law, and when the North hesitated to 
grant it, the threat of disunion prevailed over her reluctance, 
and to avoid trouble and to keep the peace it was enacted. 
Her next aggression was upon the territories, which we, trust- 
ing to her honor, thought were forever safe for freedom. But 
slavery was now strong and imperious ; it demanded, under 
the old threat, the repeal of the Missouri Compromise line; 
and, rather than have conflict, the North joined hands with it 
and broke up the sacred compact. And the Supreme Court of 
the United States, in contravention of the whole current of our 
legislation, in the Dred Scott decision, cemented and sealed this 
wicked deed. And then, lest the South should be offended 
and secede, the North withheld the " Wilmot proviso," for 
freedom from the entire territorial possessions of the nation. 
And, as if her own honor and dignity were not enough, she 
offered and gave to the South guarantees against all future 
amendments of the Constitution adverse to the interests of 
slavery. " Every judicial and legislative issue on this ques- 
tion, with the single exception of the final admission of Kansas, 
that has ever been raised before Congress, has been decided in 



COMFORT IN TRIBULATION, 15 

favor of the South,"* Since the beginning of the century the 
conflict has been going on between Freedom and Slavery, and 
the issues have been as just recited. Wherever slavery could 
go, the South has said it must go, and freedom has been al- 
lowed only where slavery could not come. But, blessed be 
God, this record is closed. The North has put down her foot 
and said to slavery. Thus far hast thou, come, but thou shalt 
go no farther. Slavery is remanded back to the position it 
held in 17S8, when the Constitution was adopted. Well had 
it been for the North and the nation if it had said and done this 
long ago; but by an amazing fatuity, by a spirit of timid for- 
bearance, if not of moral cowardice, it tempted and encouraged 
the South, yielding every thing to the growing exactions of 
the slave power. If the country was to be saved for freedom 
and humanity, is the war a strange thing? Is it not manifestly 
the judicial result of our own pusillanimity and faithlessness to 
the fundamental principle and law of the nation ? While the 
South has not one word of complaint to utter as against the 
Federal Government, which she herself has administered dur- 
ing nearly the whole of our history, the North may well hang 
down her head in shame, and wonder that the visitation has been 
so long deferred. For the sake of outward peace and prosperi- 
ty she has sacrificed the inalienable rights of the African race 
upon the continent ; she has sacrificed the duties she o wed to 
posterity ; she has sacrificed the duties she owed to the vast emi- 
gration from foreign lands ; she has sacrificed the duties she 
owed to the virgin soil which God had given her, to sanctify 
and bless. Moral princijDle, humanity, conscience have been 
strained to their utmost tension, and had more been yielded, I 
verily believe those mystic cords would have been snapped, the 
nation would have perished, and the crown and scepter of em- 
pire would have passed from the Queen of Liberty to the dark 
and dreadful Demon of Slaver3^ This w^ar, then, while it is 

* Mr. Everett. 



16 COMFORT m TRIBULATION. 

doubtless God's judgment upon the North for her lack of moral 
courage, is, we assuredly believe, the hope of America. The 
loss of hundreds of millions of treasure, and thousands of pre- 
cious lives on the battle-field and in the camp will gain for 
the continent universal freedom. What humanity, patriotism, 
piety must hereafter say to the South, should have been said 
from the beginning : " Your constitutional rights, historically 
and judicially declared, shall be granted you, fairly, freely, fully, 
but in the behalf of slavery no more^ If the spirit of the states- 
men who enacted the ordinance forever forbidding slavery in 
the North-western Territory ; if the spirit of Clay, who said, ^ 
" Let my arm wither in its socket, before I raise it to vote for 
the extension of American slavery ;"* if the spirit of Webster, 
who solemly declared, " Under no circumstances will I consent 
to the further extension of the area of slavery in the United 
States;" if this spirit had been that of the North, firmly, 
manfully insisted upon, the South would never have made or 
pressed her demands ; and what a different record would have 
been that of the history of this country ! 

But, however blameworthy the North has been as toward 
the South, another view, that should sustain and encourage us 
in the present emergency of our beloved country, is the recti- 
tude and the necessity of the war on the part of the Federal 
Administration. That has been at no fault in this matter. Never 
was a more necessary and a more righteous war than the pre- 
sent, so far as the government is concerned. Our Chief Magis- 
trate, as the nation's head and representative, said, with simj)le 
truth, in his inaugural address : " In your hands, my dissatisfied 
fellow-citizens, in yours and not in mine, is the momentous 
issue of civil war. The Government will not assail you ; you 
can have no conflict without being yourselves the aggressors. 
You have no oath registered in heaven to destroy the govern- 

* Quoted from memory. 



COMFORT IN TRIBULATION. 17 

ment, while I shall have the most solemn one to 'preserve, 
protect, and defend it.' " And Mr. Holt thus affirmed the same 
truth : " It is not a war of conquest, or of aggression, or of 
submission, or of passion, or of revenge, but in every hght in 
which it can be regarded, it is a war of duty^ And when God 
imposes upon a nation such a duty, it requires no revelation to 
assure them of the Divine cooperation and blessing in their 
attempts to discharge it. We have no choice in the matter : a 
necessity is laid upon us ; woe is imto us if we do not fight. 
The war is not of our seeking; it is forced upon us. We 
endeavored to avoid it. We yielded almost every thing to 
avoid it, trenching even upon honor, conscience, and humanity. 
We were incredulous as to the designs of the malcontents, even 
to the very last. We could not believe that a deadly assault 
was to be made upon the sacred ark of human liberties and 
hopes — the freest, the mildest, the best government God ever 
gave to this fallen race. We could not believe that men, 
whose oaths were registered in heaven to support and defend 
it, who had been educated, honored, trusted, and cherished by 
it, who for years had sat in the Cabinet and in the high council 
chamber of the nation, and who had won their fame under its 
banner, would actually attempt its overthrow. We shut our 
eyes to the most palpable proofs of conspiracy, perjury, plun- 
der, and treason on their part, for we could not believe that a 
people whom the government had never betrayed or harmed a 
hair of their head, into whose lap it had poured unmingled 
blessings without stint, would forsake their own mercies and 
join in the diabolical outrage. And even when they struck 
the fatal blow, and the nation sprang to its feet, and shook off 
its lethargy, and lifted its voice of warning to the South, we 
were still incredulous, and only through a bloody defeat and a 
shameful rout have we been made absolutely conscious of the 
stupendous truth. 
Never among men has there been such a causeless, detesta- 



18 COMFOET IN TRIBULATION. 

ble, atrocious rebellion. We must go to another world to find 
its i:)arallel. Nowhere can we find it, except as we read in 
God's Book that vast numbers of spirits, living under an 
absolutely" perfect government, exalted and blest to the very. 
limit of their capacities, in the pride and madness of their 
hearts attempted its overthrow, and sought to establish a 
dominion of their own among themselves. Not that I would 
compare any human government with the Divine, only I think 
that the union of law and liberty, and the recognition of 
individual rights and worth, approximate nearer to those of 
heaven in this than in any other country in the world; so 
that the guilt of this Southern conspiracy has no rival, so far 
as is known, save that of the rebel angels. Indomitable 
pride and lust of dominion produced them both ; they are 
alike excuseless and profane, and the day of both is coming. 
The path of our duty, therefore, is as plain as a revelation 
could make it. It is, by every energy we possess, with all our 
heart and soul and mind and strength, to crush out, to anni- 
hilate this rebellion. The only guilt that can surpass that of 
this gigantic treason, would be that of its allowance. Cost 
what it may of material prosperity, of treasure, and of life, 
come what may as the consequences of the effort, our one duty, 
as plain as the moral law, is to support our Government, pre- 
serve our Constitution, maintain our Union, and transmit this 
Divine heritage of freedom to posterity undiminished and 
untarnished. We can not falter, unless we are prepared to 
plunge ourselves and countless myriads of our fellow-men into 
an abyss of infamy from which we can never emerge, and give 
to the enormous iniquity of this rebellion a kind of justifica- 
tion. In the recollection of the sacrifices and sufferings, 
sorrows and blood, which purchased our liberties, with the 
noble example of our ancestors before us, with the eyes of the 
civihzed world upon us, with the hopes of unborn generations 
committed to us, with inexhaustible means and resources at 



COMFOET IN TRIBULATION". 19 

our command, witli riglit and honor, duty and God on our 
side, shall we hesitate, shall we yield, shall we despond ? No. 
The battle is not ours, but God's ; and as certainly as he put 
down the rebellion in heaven, so surely, if we are not faithless 
to the most sacred trust ever committed to a peoj)le, will he 
destroy this monster rebellion, and preserve our nationality 
and liberties. 

I had purposed, in the next place, to speak of the revealed 
fact, that God's dealings with nations have varied relations and 
objects, and that it is the extreme of folly to fix our minds 
upon one, and that the darkest and most improbable, to the 
exclusion of others ; but time warns me to hasten to my last 
topic, upon which I beg you to bear with me a few minutes^ 
I refer to the connection of the present war with slavery. 
That this institution, as legalized in the South, pervading with 
its poisoned virus every stratum and ramification of society, 
coloring and vitalizing laws, politics, customs, opinions, domes- 
tic habits, lifting high its head and spreading wide its arms, 
laying one of its iron hands on the continent of Africa and the 
other on that of America — that slavery is the real cause of the 
rebellion which has shaken the nation to its center, no one of 
us doubts. 1 know that the oj^position to. it which prevails 
throughout Euro|)e, and has been steadily increasing at the 
North, is charged with originating and fomenting our troubles. 
I do not deny that many persons among us have been unwise 
and unchristian in their proceedings against it. But if resist- 
ance to its exorbitant demands for territory and dominion, to 
its rendering of the Constitution, to its new and arrogant 
claims of Divine authority and fundamental necessity as the 
base and corner-stone of the best human government — if such 
resistance is the cause of the present war, I think the war a 
good one, and am willing to bear my share of its responsibility 
and its burdens. 

If slavery is not an evil and a curse, but a divinely blessed 



20 COMFORT IN TRIBULATION. 

institution, even then its revolt against the Government, under 
such opposition as it has received, is altogether without extenua- 
tion. Slavery with God and humanity on its side, could have 
borne and ought to have borne ten-fold the agitation it has had 
from the North. That which is true, good, and divine, is hon- 
ored and built up, not hurt and irritated by trials like this. 
But slavery can not brook agitation ; it avoids discussion ; it 
allows neither free speech nor a free press ; it hates the light, 
neither cometh to the light, and whatever tends to expose its 
real character and actings is forbidden. Only on the supposi- 
tion that there is a deep and essential wrong in its very nature, 
can we understand and interpret its conduct. It does not act 
like innocence, and the opposition it has encountered has only 
revealed the tenacious grasping and domineering spirit that 
animates and sustains the system. 

With relatives and friends in the South, with deep sympa- 
thies for its humane, moral, and Christian population, in common 
with many others, I have ever refused to denounce them for 
holdinsf slaves, or to esteem them sinners above all that dwell 
in our favored land. I entertain the same views to-day ; in- 
deed, my sympathies are even more profound and tender ; and I 
would be the last to bring a railing accusation against them ; 
but the history of the past ten months has poured a lurid light 
upon the whole system of American slavery, and made revela- 
tions concerning it to which no patriot can be blind. The 
attitude of the people of the South to the system is changed. 
Their position is reversed. The power has passed from them 
to restrain, guide, and control ^the system, and now slavery 
animates, molds, and controls tl^em. It is as supreme over the 
master as over the slave. Like Eomanism, it overshadows, 
fascinates, and enthralls its votaries, rendering them powerless 
to resist its subtle, fatal influences. While we thus distinguish 
between the system and the persons under it, let us remember 
that this distinction goes far to mitigate the guilt of individuals. 



COMFORT IN" TRIBULATION". 21 

We all feel tliat tlie subjects of Eomanism are to be pitied as 
inucli as they are to be blamed. And if you and I were in the 
South, possibly we should be led captive by slavery at its will. 
In such times a remnant, according to election, may be reserved 
unto loyalty, but only a remnant. Let us not judge the masses 
harshly. As clay is in the hands of the potter, so are they in 
its hand. While we condemn the system, we can pity and 
pray for the enthralled people. 

Surveying the South a year ago, looking into its homes and 
churches, into its schools and colleges, observing its culture 
and refinement, we should all have pronounced such a rebellion 
as that which now assails the very life and being of the nation, 
an utter impossibility. We should have said that no power 
this side of the pit existed capable of plunging so many mil- 
lions of free and rational men and women into a revolt against 
the most benignant government God ever ordained on earth. 
But this rebellion has shown that slavery has become the 
master-spirit of the South, and that it is as malignant and 
desperate as it is despotic. It knows no scruples of conscience, 
of honor, or of humanity ; it stops at no obstacles ; it hesitates 
at no crime ; it accepts the aid of poison and assassination ; it 
heaps its highest honors on traitors, perjurers^ liars, and robbers ; 
it repudiates most sacred obligations, private and public ; it puts 
on the mask of patriotism and plunders the mints, arsenals, 
forts, and navy-yards of an unsuspecting nation. By foul 
slanders and lying proclamations^ it drags its blinded and fren- 
zied population into an unnatural and fratricidal war. It fights 
with stolen arms, and in its modes of warfare renews and sur- 
passes those of the Goths and Vandals. It stands with lighted 
match at the magazine, determined to rule all or ruin all. At 
its feet, country, church, domestic institutions, law, order, honor, 
oaths, property, and freedom, lie in abject submission, and at its 
bidding, Eepudiation, Treason, Eebellion, Eevolution, spring 
forth, and armed hosts march against our Capitol, the center and 



22 COMFORT m TRIBULATION. 

the citadel of our hopes, tlie eye and tlie heart of oiirbodj politic. 
Long has it been gathering strength for this stupendous crime ; 
slowly but steadily has it been undermining the principles of 
humanity and religion among its population, palsjdng the' 
instinct of indignation at wrong, making horrid deeds of sin 
venal and harmless, exalting political necessities into moral 
principles, and blinding vast numbers, even in the North, by its 
demoniacal sophistries. Slavery throughout the South, and 
without a protest against it, has by stern law forbidden four mil- 
lions of men, made in the similitude of God, and hastening to his 
judgment-bar, to read his word and educate themselves or their 
children. Though every one of them is the kindred of Christ, 
and many of them chosen of God and precious, it has prac- 
tically numbered them among the brutes that perish, so that in 
the striking language of Count de Gasparin, " Every day in all 
the Southern States, families are sold at retail ; the father to 
one, the mother to another, the son to a third, the young daugh- 
ter to a fourth ; and the father, the mother, the children, are 
scattered to the four winds of heaven ; these hearts are broken, 
these poor beings are given a prey to infamy and sorrow, these 
marriages are ruptured, and adulterous unions are formed 
twenty leagues, a hundred leagues away, in the bosom and with 
the assent of a Christian community." With untiring zeal and 
unexampled energy it seeks to perpetuate itself and enlarge the 
area of its terrible power. It sets itself against the Divine, 
prophetic decrees which foretell and proclaim liberty to the 
captives, the undoing of heavy burdens, the letting the oppressed 
go free, the breaking of every yoke, and the opening of the 
prison-doors to them that are bound. It eviscerates the Gospel 
of its holy precepts which command masters to render that 
which is j ust and equal to their servants, doing unto them as 
they would be done by. But I need not develop any farther this 
enormity. It is very familiar to us all ; only in the bright and clear 
atmosphere which this war has created w^e are restored to our 



COMFOET IN TEIBULATION. 23 

normal and Cliristian vision, and we can not help seeing what 
once we were unwilling to believe. 

Now, my dear friends, why should we look at this war as the 
death-doom of our nation? Why should we not rather feel 
that God has called for it, in order to destroy the power, to 
break the yoke of this accursed and galling system of human 
bondage, and sunder the alliance between our glorious Con- 
stitution and this foul, fearful iniquity ? To the hmiian eje it 
really seems as if nothing else could effect these ends, so 
thoroughly has it entrenched itself in the Constitution of the 
nation and laws of the States, in the trade and commerce of the 
people, in European necessities and industries. The tenacity 
with which the South cling to their slavery of the Africans is 
not unlike that of the Egyptians to theirs of the Israelites. 
And we know what terrible judgments were required in order 
to make them loose tlieir hold upon their bond-slaves. Lands, 
rivers, fountains, houses, cattle, were all devastated with Divine 
judgments; and not until the first-born of every family in 
Egypt was slain in one night, was the maddening spell suffi- 
ciently broken to allow of the deliverance of Israel from the 
house of their bondage. In like manner do our brethren of 
the South cherish and value their servitude of the African 
race. It is the corner-stone of their Confederacy. Without it 
every thing else is worthless in their esteem. They therefore 
keep it as the apple of their eye ; they grave it on the palms of 
their hands, and sooner shall a mother forget her sucking child, 
and cease to have compassion on the sou of her womb, than 
they prove faithless to their servile institution. But the days 
of miracles are past, and what was effected in EgjqDt by super- 
natural means, God may now effect by natural. And of all 
instrumentalities within the range of nature, what could so 
thorough 13^ accomplish this object as this uncompromising- 
deadly conflict which, through the madness of their own hearts, 
God has brought upon them ? Indeed, I think it can be de- 



24 COMFORT IN TRIBULATION. 

monstrated that nothing less than civil ivar could prevent the 
system from becoming the dominant power upon the continent; 
and I verily believe that in the end it will appear that the 
plagues of Egypt were not more destructive to slavery there 
than this war will be to slavery here. The more wide-spread 
and desperate the rebellion, the more terrible and fatal will be 
the blow struck at the system ; and how wide-spread and des- 
perate the rebellion is, a few words will indicate. 

(1.) Only one tenth of the slave population of the country are 
in the loyal States. All the rest, three million six hundred 
thousand, are in the rebel States, under the control and partak- 
ing of the fortunes of those States. 

(2.) These States^ numbering nearly ten millions of mixed 
population, are practically under a reign of terror. The whole - 

are comjDelled to support the rebellion. Men, women, and i 

children are wrought into a state bordering upon frenzy, A 4 

spirit of fierce and bloody hatred seems to possess the people. 
Their capacity for making and believing falsehoods is so won- 
derful, that we can account for it only by supposing that the 
God of Truth has given them over to strong delusions to be- 
lieve lies for their destruction. 

(3.) Their recuperative energies are terribly broken by the 
war ; and if it continues long, will be utterly destroyed. Des- 
titute already, to a vast extent, of the common comforts and 
conveniences of civilized society ; their good name, their 
money, their credit, and their monopoly of cotton, gone ; their 
internal public improvements arrested, if not " annihilated — 
what will remain to them when the war is over, if not before, 
but to be utterly exhausted and rent with internal factions, 
heart-burnings, and bitter enmities. How can they recover 
themselves ? If slavery then exists, how can they sustain them- 
selves, with thirty -six hundred thousand slaves, fevered with 
excitement, restless and difficult to control, yet absolutely de- 
pendent on them ? 



COMFORT IN TRIBULATION. 25 

(4.) The refusal of England and France to lend tliem assist- 
ance will only make tliem more fierce and desperate. Thrown 
entirely npon themselves, they must in the very first campaign 
gather all their forces, collect all their reserves, and resist the 
tremendous forces of the Union, until overwhelming disasters, 
and a sudden collapse, leave them prostrate, helpless, utterly 
broken in their social and political fabric. 

(5.) The 380,000 slaveholders are, with few exceptions, en- 
gaged directly in the rebellion. The loss among them by death 
in the camp and in battle, by expatriation and exile, by the 
confiscation of their estates and escape of their slaves, added to 
their complete exhaustion by the war, will make doubly sure 
the final result. 

(6.) Once more : their early and signal successes in seizing 
the national custom-houses, mints, armories, arsenals, forts, and 
navy-yards, and their victories over the national armies at Big- 
Bethel, Stone Bridge, Wilson's Creek, and Lexington, have 
only magnified and intensified the conflict. While imparting 
the wildest confidence to the South, they have aroused the most 
solemn determination in the North ; so that now conciliation, 
compromise, a half-and-half struggle are impossible ; and the 
National Government is compelled to precipitate its whole 
power — the power of twenty-three millions of free people, 
abounding in resources of all kinds, compact, with vast armies, 
and vaster reserves, and nearly three hundred vessels of war 
afloat, against that of six millions in rebellion, relatively with- 
out military resources, widely scattered, without a navy, and 
encumbered with not far from four millions of slaves. 

Such are the circumstances, in which the Slave Power is 
placed to-day. And while the Federal Administration, in con- 
ducting the war rightly and earnestly, protest that their aim is 
not the destruction of slavery, and the South as earnestly pro- 
claim that its preservation is their aim, is it not more than pro- 
bable that God means something very different from either? 



26 COMFORT IN TRIBULATION. 

The blows whicli preserve our Union and destroy tlie rebellion 
take their chief effect upon slavery. It requires no Daniel to 
interpret the Mene Mene Tekel Upharsin on the walls of 
the institution. Its destruction may not be as sudden as that of 
the Egyptian bondage, but no doubt it is as certain. 

God grant that in bringing about this result, the homes of 
the South may be spared from the terrors of servile insuiTec- 
tion, and the people from the horrors of servile war ! God 
grant that Pestilence and Famine may not blight and devastate 
the beautiful and sunny South ! God grant that the defeat of 
their armies may be so complete and overwhelming as to make 
their submission prompt and perfect ; so that the united wis- 
dom and piety of the whole land may undertake the manage- 
ment of as difl&cult a problem as ever fell to the lot of a nation : 
What to do with and for the multiplying millions of the Af- 
rican race upon our soil ? But these things are hidden in the 
future. God himself will determine them. Meantime, leaving 
all contingencies and results with him, unhampered by the 
thought of possible and probable difficulties, let us give our- 
selves, our property, our prayers, our all, absorbingly to the 
fulfillment of God's manifested will, to the discharge of our 
sad but stern duty in the war to which his Providence has 
summoned us ; the putting down, completely and forever, the 
greatest rebellion the earth has ever known. 

Before closing, let me give utterance to a single caution. 
There is danger that, with such views as have been set before 
you, we repeat some of the very sins which have brought our 
troubles upon us. There is danger, that in our consciousness of 
strength and assurance of final victory, we forget the God who 
has remembered and protected us in our weakness and disas- 
ters, and trust and glory in our own might and wisdom, in the 
skill and energy of our commanders, in the number and valor 
of our soldiers, in our armaments and munitions of war, instead 
of relying solely on Him who has given us all these, and who 



COMFORT IN TRIBULATION. 27 

cau at any time blight and blast them all. Every thing depends 
on the favor of God. We have now abundant reason to be- 
lieve that he is with us. Let us be very careful, lest we offend 
and grieve him by an unholy self-confidence and dependence 
on means and agencies, instead of him who provides them. 
This day's solemnities and services are designed to forestall and 
prevent a sin so pregnant with disaster and woe. For demoral- 
ization and insubordination, sickness, defeat, dismay, and panic, 
are God's servants and messengers, and he sends them whenso- 
ever and to whomsoever he pleases. If we glory in our might 
and wisdom and riches and resources, and not in the Lord, then 
though the nation were ten-fold more powerful than it is, we 
could not hope to prevail. We must make God our refuge 
and defense. With the Almighty against us, confusion, disas- 
ter, and panic will attend our armies. The stars of heaven, in 
their courses, will fight against us. Oh ! for a steadfast, serene 
trust in the Lord God of Hosts ! It were madness for us to 
rely on men and munitions of war, and not on Him who alone 
giveth strength, courage, and victory. 

I have spoken my own sentiments freely and frankly. They 
give reason and value to the services of this day, in my esteem. 
I can not look upon this fearful struggle in the light which 
many view it. While I see more than enough to make us 
humble and lowly and dependent on God, I see nothing to 
make us despond, much to make us hopeful and jubilant. In 
the inscrutable purposes of his Providence, God may mean, 
after all, to dash this nation in pieces like a potter's vessel. I 
would not presume to deny it ; but I can not see one sound 
reason, deduced from history, or from the nature of the strife, 
or from the word of God, for such a conclusion. Wherefore, 
let us fast and pray this day in hope and not in fear, and, 
penitent for our sins, and humble in spirit, let us prosecute this 
war in the name of the Lord of Hosts, leaning on his arm, 
hoping that in the end the North and the South will be forgiven 



28 COMFOKT IX TRIBULATIOX. 

and purified, and cemented in the bonds of a more perfect and 
blessed union, and that the words of Divine prophecy concern- 
ing another nation divided against itself, will be fulfilled in 
our reiinited country. "Behold I will bring it health and 
cure ; and I will cure them, and will reveal unto them the 
abundance of peace and truth. And I will cause the captivity 
of Judah and the captivity of Israel to return, and will build 
them as at the first. And I will cleanse them from all their 
iniquit}'', whereby they have sinned against me ; and I will par- 
don all their iniquities, whereby they have sinned and whereby 
they have transgressed against me. And it shall be to me a 
name of joy, a praise, and an honor before all the nations of 
the earth, which shall hear all the good that I do unto them ; 
and they shall fear and tremble for all the goodness and for all 
the prosperity that I procure unto it." 



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